In which I contact a Frauenarzt all by myself

My doctor is not this scary… (Photo credit: partymonstrrrr)

It’s that time again… when I reach the final week of my pill packet and suddenly realise it was the last one in the box and I really need to make an appointment to get some more. Usually, I make the appointment with my Hausarzt (General Practitioner). We have an agreement where I tell him I’ll go for my smear tests in the UK and he gives me my prescription, no further questions asks. Unfortunately – not for the first time – my Hausarzt is on holiday right when I need him. I seem to have a knack for wanting an appointment when he isn’t there… and he’s not going to be there until after I need the pill again. Roughly a week after, to be precise. Normally, this is my cue to get Jan to start calling round doctors for me (I like my Hausarzt because I can make appointments online… no need to attempt to spell my name to nasty receptionists!) but I’ve barely even seen him since we were on the train together on Sunday, and certainly not for long enough to have a real conversation!

It was time to bite the bullet and find myself another doctor! After some googling for Frauenarzt Karlsruhe (a Frauenarzt is a gynaecologist, by the way… and is where I’m supposed to go for the pill) I decided on one that’s a) close to my house and b) had a website that came equipped with an e-mail address. I sent an e-mail explaining the situation and received a reply within two hours:  Of course you can come by and get a prescription for the pill. Just drop by with your health insurance card – on Tuesdays and Friday we’re open til 7 p.m. (I had said I can only do 5:30 onwards due to work). Oh, and usually we would then make an appointment for a consultation and cancer screening at that point. How do things stand with you?

The Frauenarzt chair of doooom!

I had to take a deeeep breath before hitting  reply.  I can come by on Friday to pick up the prescription. As for the screening stuff… usually I get it done in England becasue I don’t have a gynaecologist in Germany, but it’s been three years and I’m not going back home any time soon so maybe I should get it done here. (What I didn’t say was that, actually, it was three years in October… my dad opened the reminder letter for me, but I haven’t been back to England since… Germans expect you to have it done every year (and every six months if you’re on the pill!! Excessive much?!) so I didn’t want to alarm her more than I assume she already will be…). There hasn’t been a reply to that e-mail so far, so I don’t know yet whether I’m actually going to have to get a smear test done in Germany. I’ve heard scary stories about nakedness and the horrible chair though (no lying down on a bed like back home for German women!)… wish me luck!

Advertisement

In which I overshare about my sex life

NOTE: If you have a problem with the whole sex-before-marriage thing (sorry, but I’ve been with my boyfriend nearly 9 years, living together for almost 3. You really think we don’t do it?!) or just don’t want to read about other people’s sex lives please feel free to click away now. Consider yourself forewarned – and don’t blame me if you get to the end and feel offended! For the rest of you… read on (I promise not to get into too much detail…)

So, over the course of our relationship, the boyfriend and I haven’t always had sex as much as I would like.

No Sex (Photo credit: djwingsia)

Obviously during our two year long distance relationship, not much of anything was happening, but after I moved to Germany I expected things to pick up. Which they did, at first but gradually “it” happened less and less often. Then at some point we would talk fight about it, things would improve for a while, then it would dwindle again until we were doing it maybe once a month.

So, a few weeks before Christmas, after getting nothing for almost two months, I told Jan I was thinking about coming off the pill once all the ones I still had were used up – after all, what was the point in protecting against immaculate conception? (Of course I was going to finish the packets I had left – I pay good money for those suckers! Welcome to any country that’s not in the UK…). Not the best start to that conversation, I admit. Inevitably it ended in a fight (you can’t make start a conversation with those words and not hurt your man’s feelings..), I cried, then I had to go to work. Yes… I have great timing.

The next day, I sat down and wrote a letter explaining everything I wanted to say. It had to be a better option than blurting things out without thinking about what I wanted to say, right? I left the letter for Jan to read and (again) went to work – I wanted him to read it when I wasn’t there, so he would have time to recover from his first reaction and really think about what I was trying to say, rather than getting defensive in the heat of the moment. Later, he thanked me for writing the letter. Then we each agreed to work on what was bothering the other person (basically, he says he’s sick of always being the one to initiate things, while I say whenever I try to initiate anything he doesn’t seem interested, and even things that have worked before never seem to work a second time. Like I said, oversharing…). We then went away for Christmas, sleeping in beds at other people’s houses, and I started my period, which didn’t help… so still no sex.

Then, 2 weeks ago, while in bed, I asked him what I would have to do to turn him on. Unbelievably, his first response was that he didn’t know! (How am I supposed to know if he doesn’t?). He then countered by asking what I’d been trying. Apparantly I was too subtle though – he hadn’t even noticed me doing those things!! In the end I did get a few ideas. But the next time we did it, he was the initiator again… so on Friday night I decided to take the bull by the horns (oo-er, I’ve just realised how dirty that sound in this context!).

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When Jan got home, I was finishing off the white sauce for the lasagne while the washing machine beeped furiously. Stress! He immediately offered to hang the washing, allowing me to finish tea. I finished preparing the lasagne, stuck it in the oven, and went to the living room, where I found Jan hanging the last item of washing on the airer. Excellent! I saw my chance and started kissing him. Passionately. After a few minutes of this (plus a bit of neck kissing and… other stuff), he asked “Is there anything you would like”. My response “Well… we have half an hour…” I’ll leave the next bit up to your imagination…

… we finished just in time for the lasagne to come out of the oven. I guess I do still have an affect on him after all…

Why am I telling you this? I know I’ve complained on here before about being sexually frustrtaed and worried that my boyfriend no longer finds me attractive… so I thought for once I would tell you something positive… plus I wanted to tell someone, and I don’t really have anyone other than my blog to discuss my sex life with. (HA, I won’t tell my friends, but the Internet is fair game? I’m so not normal…). And if you’ve got this far and are offended/bored/amazed at my stupidity, well, all I can say is I did warn you at the beginning. I make no apologies… I’ve felt happy and confident all day today, and that was something I wanted to share. 🙂 (But I sincerely hope neither my mother nor any of my colleagues ever comes across this blog…)

p.s. One of the suggested tags from Zemanta for this post is “human sexual activity”. Well, yes I should hope so! As far as I’m aware neither of us are dogs. Or aliens…